Professional “Anti-hate” Group Goes to Bed with Reds

John Rossomando of The Daily Caller has broken a story about how the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a source of information for the major media on such matters as the Arizona shooting rampage, is now placing its articles in a communist newspaper through a left-wing “news service.”

The paper is the People’s World, the official on-line publication of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The CPUSA is the old Moscow-line party which was funded by the Soviet Union and infiltrated the U.S. government with agents and spies. It was an official sponsor[1] of the October 2, 2010, “One Nation Working Together” progressive rally in Washington.

The Rossomando piece[2] reports that Mark Potok, the director of the “intelligence project” of the SPLC, “declined to comment when asked whether ‘People’s World’ should remove his commentary or whether he disapproved of the CPUSA newspaper’s decision to publish his piece.”

The no-comment is unusual for Potok, who has been widely quoted by the press as some kind of authority on the “far right,” with National Public Radio portraying him[3] as an expert on “extremist groups.” Now, the SPLC itself stands accused of being in bed with an organ of a political party whose ideology The Black Book of Communism[4] says is responsible for about 100 million deaths.

Paul Kengor, author of Dupes, a book on how communists use liberals for their own purposes, told Rossomando[5], “It is ironic that liberal groups such as the SPLC, like other liberals, never see the pro-communists as the bad guys.”

But this isn’t the first time that Potok has appeared in the People’s World. An article from March of 2010[6] claimed he had played a role in forcing Lou Dobbs to leave CNN and quoted him as saying that constituents of Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann should pressure her to “stop” making “false allegations” about President Obama.

The SPLC President J. Richard Cohen said[7] Dobbs was a racist and had to go because he dared to assert that Obama’s certification of live birth, released by the Obama presidential campaign, is not the “original document” because it fails to include basic information about the hospital where he was born and the attending physician. Legitimate or long-form birth certificates include such information.

While attempting to protect Obama from serious scrutiny into his background, the SPLC labeled[8] communist terrorist bomber Bill Ayers, an associate of the President, “a highly respected figure in the field of multicultural education,” and even promoted an American Indian group[9] that celebrates the killer of two FBI agents.

The Potok article in the communist paper[10] denounces an obscure event sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Liberal Journalist Ken Silverstein has written several articles[11] about the questionable fund-raising techniques of the SPLC, including exaggerating alleged right-wing threats to make money. In regard to the Arizona massacre, the SPLC was quick to cite a Fox News report, later exposed as false[12], that a right-wing group had influenced shooter Jared Loughner.

The Potok article on the southern heritage controversy was provided through a news service, OtherWords, sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

The IPS came under criticism in the 1980s, even from a New York Times Magazine article “Think Tank of the Left,” for being a mouthpiece for anti-American and communist regimes. One of its officials, Orlando Letelier, was exposed as a Cuban agent in briefcase papers found by law enforcement authorities after his death. Bill Ayers himself had been an IPS speaker on educational issues.

Rather than being just one of several sources of articles being placed in “progressive” publications like the People’s World, the SPLC is a “partner[13]” in the IPS OtherWords news service, along with such organizations as the George Soros-funded Free Press, founded by Marxist Robert McChesney. Potok spoke[10] at a Free Press conference.